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**Gospel for Wednesday 28th June, the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul, Apostles: Matthew 16:13-19**

**As it is a Solemnity, after the Gospel passage you will find some commentary split into two sections.**

**1) Some teaching points to consider in this passage**

**2) What does this mean for me and my life today?**

**We hope you will find it useful!**

**Gospel Matthew 16:13-19**

**When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi he put this question to his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say he is John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ ‘But you,’ he said ‘who do you say I am?’ Then Simon Peter spoke up, ‘You are the Christ,’ he said ‘the Son of the living God.’ Jesus replied, ‘Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.’**

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi he put this question to his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say he is John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ ‘But you,’ he said ‘who do you say I am?’ Then Simon Peter spoke up, ‘You are the Christ,’ he said ‘the Son of the living God.’ Jesus replied, ‘Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.’

**1) Some teaching points to consider in this passage**

**Context**

Jesus has taken the disciples to Caesarea Philippi. We are told of nothing else that happens here yet all three synoptic Gospels include this important interaction. Why take the disciples to this particular place which was a predominantly Gentile city north of Palestine and would have been a day’s walk away? The location is everything! Originally known as Paneas, this was the site of a shrine to the Greco-Roman god Pan where animal and even human sacrifices were made as well as sexual rites to the god of fertility. The Shrine was based around a deep cave out of which flowed a vast spring, so deep in fact that the people believed it must flow from the underworld. During Jesus’ time, the city had been renamed Caesarea Philippi by Philip the son of Herod the Great – named after Caesar Tiberius (son of Caesar Augustus) and himself, both considered sons of ‘gods’. This was a place that Jews would avoid and would be warned against by their Rabbis, yet Jesus deliberately takes his disciples right to the heart of it.

In front of both the pagan shrine and the temple erected to the ‘sons of gods’, Jesus asks the key question which prompts Peter’s great confession ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God’. Peter declares confidently in the midst of all these other ideas of god that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Messiah, not just a prophet and that He is the Son of the *Living* God, not like these ‘gods’ who are dead and gone. Jesus then assures them that even the gates of the underworld, again illustrated in front of them, cannot stand against Him.

**Who do people say I am?**

This is still a pertinent question today. Who do the voices around you say Jesus is? Some of the most common answers might be ‘a wise teacher who said some good things’, ‘an unassuming guy who just wanted to point people to God and then others have used him for their agenda, falsely making him into a god so that they could seize power’ or even ‘a fairy tale who never existed’. All of these ideas can be easily debunked with even a small amount of study, but let’s face it, most people just want their opinion regardless of how well formed it may or may not be. If I were to ask most people ‘do you believe in Socrates and what he stood for?’ their answer would most likely be more measured. A quick search on the internet will reveal that Socrates was a Greek philosopher from [Athens](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Athens) who is credited as one of the founders of [Western philosophy](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_philosophy). Yet Socrates left no writings of his own behind. We mainly know of him, his sayings and philosophies from his disciple Plato. However, no one would say he was just a fairy tale or that Plato just took advantage of the situation to spread his own agenda despite the fact that even over 2000 years later the ‘Socratic method’ is used to examine key moral concepts such as Good and [Justice](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice) and is considered a defining element of legal education.

So why is there such resistance and reluctance to accept that Jesus really existed or that He is God? Because, to truly believe in Jesus, is not comfortable and convenient. Believing in Socrates and his ideas of philosophy, does not necessarily affect my day to day life, but if Jesus is Who He said He is then I have to sit up and listen and my life will never be the same again!

**Church**

The word ‘church’ has become so familiar to us that you might be forgiven for thinking that Jesus talks about it a lot. But you would be mistaken. Jesus only refers to the church twice in all of the Gospel accounts (both in Matthew’s account, see also Matt 18:17) and the first is here in today’s passage. Much more often Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God, what it is like, how you enter, that everyone has a place etc. The word ‘church’ is used in the Greek Old Testament however to denote the congregation or assembly of Israel united to God and in today’s passage we see Jesus forming a new Covenant community of which Peter is to take the lead and, along with the other disciples, build this new community.

**You are Cephas
**‘Petros’ from which we derive ‘Peter’ was a common word in Greek but there is no evidence that it was ever used as a name for a person before Jesus gave it to Simon in this encounter. Jesus renames Simon ‘the rock’ upon which He will build His Church. This is further compounded by the fact that Jesus would most likely have been speaking in Aramaic, using the word ‘kepha’ from which we get ‘Cephas’ (see John 1:42, 1 Cor 1:12, 15:5, Gal 1:8 etc) denoting a ‘sizeable rock’, one suitable to be used as a foundation.

There are also many important comparisons between Peter and Abraham in this passage. Both are blessed by God (Matt 16:17, Gen 14:19), both respond with heroic faith (Matt 16:16, Heb 11:8), both receive a divine mission (Matt 16:18, Gen 12:1-3), both have names changed (Matt 18:18, Gen 17:5), both called ‘rock’ (Matt 18:18, Is 51:1-2), both assured authority over enemies (Matt 18:18, Gen 22:17). Abraham is the Father of Faith in the Old Covenant and now Peter becomes the Father of Faith in the New Covenant.

**Keys and Authority**

In the Old Testament Davidic empire, the King appointed a cabinet of ministers for specific tasks in the kingdom (1 Kings 4:1-6, 2 Kings 18:37). Of these, a prime minister was elevated to unique status of authority, ranking second only to the King. This government structure was common among kingdoms in the ancient Near East (Gen 41:39-43, Esther 3:1-2). Jesus here evokes Isaiah 22:15-25, where the prime minister’s office is handed on to a successor by the symbolic act of handing on the ‘key of the house (ie kingdom) of David’. In Matthew’s account of the Gospel, Jesus is the new Davidic King Who appoints Peter the prime minister of the kingdom of heaven in the church. As in Isaiah 22, Peter’s position is designed for him and his successors with the office meant to endure as long as the kingdom itself. Entrusted with the keys, Peter wields Christ’s own royal authority.

**2) What does this mean for me and my life today?**

**Revealed by my Father in Heaven
**The revelation of Who Jesus is can only come from the Father, no ‘flesh and blood’ can ever make you believe. That is why faith is a gift! Of course there are ways and means of helping others and ourselves be more open to receiving that gift, but ultimately we cannot earn or create faith. But the good news is that faith is a free gift that God desires for each and every person – He desperately wants you to know Him and His unconditional love for you. And all those for whom you desire that faith, maybe spouses, children, friends, the lost etc, God desperately wants that for them too! We cannot give them that gift but we can help them want it by loving them and sharing our own faith with them so they know what they are missing!

**Identity
**Have you noticed that Peter receives his clear identity in today’s passage and that it only happens after he has understood Who Jesus truly is? We can only know who we truly are when we know *Whose* we truly are. There are so many labels that we put on ourselves to ‘find’ our identity today – ‘the clever/stupid one’, ‘the outgoing/shy one’, ‘the gay/straight one’, ‘the success/failure’, ‘the holy/sinful one’, ‘the passionate/purposeless one’, ‘the beautiful/ugly one’ ‘the one who conforms/doesn’t conform’, the spouse, child, sibling, loner, sportsman, musician, nerd, entrepreneur, key-worker etc, etc etc…..

Of course all of these shape our life experience and our character BUT THEY ARE NOT WHO WE ARE!!! You are a precious Child of the Living God, nothing more and nothing less (as if there could be anything more!) Your identity is only found in Him because that is how you were created – to be one with Him forever! As St Augustine of Hippo said ‘“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” And that is not restrictive but completely freeing! You have nothing to prove and nothing to lose by being completely and utterly yourself and by devoting all of your being, ambitions, character, sexuality, fears, doubts, hopes and relationships to Him Who is your Loving Father. You can confidently allow Him Who has perfect plans for you to continually transform you into the person He created you to be before the temptations, struggles, hurts, and burdens of this world effected your ‘identity’. God has something so much more wonderful for you than you could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20)

**He will Build**

Although Jesus appoints Peter as the rock upon which the church will be built, notice that Jesus says* I* will build *MY* church. It can sometimes seem like the Church has lost her way, that we are not living the call that Jesus has given us and that there is much to be done. Well, perhaps that is the case, but it is important to remember that Jesus is building His Church not my church as I would like it. Does that mean that I should just sit back and allow Him to get on with it? Absolutely not!!! He calls us to be co-operators with Him. But we must always remember exactly that – we are co-operators, not lone operators. Jesus is the head and we are the body. A body that is pulling in all different directions will get no-where and only damage itself. But of course Jesus wants the Church to be as holy, good and beautiful as possible and most importantly to reach out with His Life-giving Truth, and so we must ensure we are listening to Him and following His lead.

**Who do you say I am?
**Jesus still asks each one of us this essential question every day – But YOU, who do YOU say I am? Our image of God can be influenced by so many things from our upbringing to the media, from our experience of Church to our experience of relationships with those outside the Church. Each of these could have a positive or negative impact. So how do we ensure that we get to know Jesus as He truly wants to be known? That is a prayer I make often: ‘Jesus, I want to know You as You want to be known’ and I spend time listening to His Word, examining His character and how He loves by reading the Scriptures. I hear from other Christians who speak or sing about Who Jesus is and I weigh that up against what I have found in the Scriptures. I read and discuss with other people what they think and again weigh it up against the evidence I can find. I trust the Holy Mother Church who has such beautiful teaching that challenges me to expand my knowledge and understanding. And above all I ‘waste’ time with Jesus in prayer, siting, listening, asking for Him to increase the capacity of my heart so that I can know Him more fully. You may have lots of other ways that you do this too! Who do YOU say Jesus is and how do you allow that image to be challenged, shaped and expanded so that you come closer to knowing Him in His fullness?

-Ruth ... See MoreSee Less